“Nobody realizes how fast 200 m.p.h. is or how light or how uncontrollable these cars are when they get out of shape.” Corey LaJoie said this after being a firsthand witness to Ryan Newman’s terrifying flip in the 2020 Daytona race. That was before the Next Gen car debuted in 2022 – but the problem has persisted even now. A series of somersault wrecks in recent races have prompted NASCAR to act, although Denny Hamlin doubts its ability.

Now that the sanctioning body is whispering about unrolling another safety measure, Hamlin is not so confident. However, NASCAR insiders opine that any effort to ensure driver safety is crucial. Some crashes can even put fans at risk, so any amount of effort would actually be helpful.

Insiders oppose Denny Hamlin’s take

During the Michigan race, Corey LaJoie made the headlines – not due to his run, but due to an unforeseen mishap. The No. 7 Chevrolet spun on its own and flipped down the backstretch. This marked the first blow-over incident at a non-superspeedway track in the Cup Series since 2010 – so officials were concerned. Shark fins or air deflectors were installed for Daytona but with little success. We witnessed an even more spine-chilling flip featuring Josh Berry – he spun sideways, violently flipped, and hit the wall.

Nonetheless, NASCAR needs to answer somehow, so a new shark-fin novelty will be installed for Talladega. Denny Hamlin flatly disapproved of this, because he does not think that “rollovers are necessarily a bad thing.” But ‘Door, Bumper, Clear‘ host Brett Griffin opposed the Cup star. “We can’t have these cars taking off like airplanes. If any part of the car ends up in the stands, people’s lives are in jeopardy. We can’t go to a racetrack and do that. Like, we know the number – the closer we get it to 200 miles an hour, the more likely they are to flip. We’ve gotta figure out a way to keep these things on the ground.”

Denny Hamlin‘s 23XI Racing employee Freddie Kraft also agreed with Griffin. He shared the rumor first: “They’ve kinda made the shark fin the length of the greenhouse, which is the front windshield and the roof.” Despite concerns about visibility cropping up, even Kraft disagreed with Hamlin. “The drivers tell you that they would rather flip over than smash a wall, but for fan safety, you can’t have these things flying.” RFK Racing spotter T.J. Majors also chimed in: “The angles that are possible once you start flipping are probably not the safest. They get off the ground. There’s a lot of things at that point that can happen.”

And the DBC guys’ argument becomes stronger given the fearsome track we are approaching this weekend – Talladega.

A penchant for the dangerous

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When Talladega Superspeedway was unveiled in 1969, many drivers including Richard Petty boycotted the first race due to safety concerns. Well, that conversation has never departed NASCAR since. The 2.66-mile tri-oval track offers a wildly unpredictable factor to drivers. Couple that with the Next Gen car and you have a recipe for disaster – in 2022, drivers walked away with concussions and fractures due to wrecks in this car. But even before the car was introduced, the track was dangerous. Dale Earnhardt Jr. crashed twice and saw two competitors flipping through the air, and described the track’s danger in 2016.

From what he said, we can muster that Talladega’s wild card nature would not easily dissolve. “That’s been the track where every so often we’ve got to ask ourselves some questions and look in the mirror and realize whether what we’re doing at Talladega is what we want to keep doing,” Earnhardt said. “When they first started running there, the tires couldn’t handle the speed, and it’s quite interesting — it hasn’t really changed a whole lot. We don’t have tire problems these days, but the track is still potentially one of the more dangerous and wildest tracks that we race at just because of the close-quarter racing and the speed that we’re running.”

So NASCAR rolling up its sleeves to face this dreaded superspeedway makes sense. Let us hope that whatever maneuver it introduces works and no other driver flips.